


conversation hearts

by renyoi



Series: klance valentine's week 2021 [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:48:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29303733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renyoi/pseuds/renyoi
Summary: Lance keeps giving Keith conversation hearts. What could it mean?[valentine's week prompt #1]
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: klance valentine's week 2021 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2152308
Comments: 7
Kudos: 131





	conversation hearts

The first time it happens, Keith had to go to Shiro and ask what the fuck Lance just threw at him. Shiro took one look at the tiny candied heart in Keith’s hand and burst into laughter.

“Oh my _god,_ that’s adorable,” he’d said fondly, taking the heart from Keith and smiling wider at the words inscribed on it, _super cool_. “Where did he even find these? Wow.”

“What _are_ they?” Keith had asked again, annoyed that Shiro wasn’t giving him a straight answer. Lance hadn’t done much explaining; Keith had heard a shriek from the distance, a bunch of running steps, and then Lance had appeared holding the heart. With nothing more than a, “Hey, Keith! I think _yoooou’re_ —“, he shoved the heart at Keith and then dashed away cackling.

Keith is pretty sure the whole thing was a compliment? But, like, _what the fuck is this heart?_

“It’s a conversation heart,” Shiro had explained, handing the heart back to Keith and shaking his head. “They’re, ah, popular around Valentine’s Day. Just candy hearts with words on them. Nothing complicated.”

_Nothing complicated._ The words bounced around in Keith’s head long after he left Shiro, and even now, as he’s sitting in his room relaxing before bed, he’s still turning it over in his head. A _heart?_ A heart people usually give around Valentine’s Day? It must mean something. But Lance is constantly joking, constantly pulling Keith’s leg, constantly flirting with him for fun and pressing their skin together, slinging his arm around Keith’s shoulder and pulling him close, smelling of pine and clean sheets and spice…

Like, as a joke. Right? Lance probably gave him this heart as a joke, as a friend. He’s straight, anyway. No use getting his hopes up.

The heart hadn’t even tasted that good, anyway. Too _chalky._

With that, Keith puts the issue to bed. That is, until the very next day, when Keith comes to bid the team farewell before he takes Red on a quick errand to gather materials.

“I’m leaving,” he says, as everyone else lounging about in the castleship main room turns to face him. He gets a series of waves, a call of “be careful!” from Shiro, and then, surprisingly, a Lance suddenly shooting up and barreling toward him.

“Wait, wait, wait!” he says eagerly, running straight past Keith and into the adjoining kitchen, reappearing a moment later clutching a—a—

“Conversation heart?” Keith says dumbly as Lance approaches, slightly out of breath. He gets a shining smile in response, and Keith has to look away for fear of being blinded.

“Exactly!” Lance holds it out to Keith, then, pinched between two fingers.

Keith takes it and reads: _bye cutey._

The red rises to his cheeks so quickly that Keith can’t think of anything else to do to cover his embarrassment but pop the heart into his mouth and swallow it whole.

Lance stares at him. Keith stares back, sweating more with each passing second. _What the fuck. What the fuck did I just—Why did I swallow it? Why did I just eat it? Why am I such an idiot, holy shit, why the fuck did I just fucking eat it oh my god oh my god oh my—_

“Wow, you’re adorable,” Lance says with a laugh, shaking his head with an exasperated smile. He claps Keith on the back once and then returns to his seat on the couch, getting absorbed in the video game he and Pidge had been playing when Keith came in.

The scratchiness of the chalky heart itches in the back of Keith’s throat. Everyone is still staring at him—Keith swears that Shiro even _snickers._

Letting out an anguished groan, Keith spins around and leaves, covering his face with his hands.

God. _God._

* * *

The next time it happens, Lance finds Keith sitting on a windowsill in the middle of the night, staring at the stars. It’s been one of those days—Keith hadn’t talked to anyone much all day, had mostly kept to himself, thinking and brooding and wondering what in the universe he was doing here.

Bad day. It’s been a bad day.

Lance settles next to Keith slowly; Keith doesn’t move, but glances over to acknowledge the other’s presence. He feels a warm, gentle hand lay on his shoulder, and lets out a breath.

“Hey,” Lance says quietly, rubbing slow circles into Keith’s tense shoulders. “Wanna talk?”

_No_ , Keith wants to say, but he can’t find the energy to make his voice work. So, he just shakes his head and slumps down, leaning more of his weight onto Lance’s comforting touch, which Lance seems to welcome gladly.

“That’s okay.” The hand on Keith’s shoulder disappears for a moment as Lance rummages around in his pockets; Keith keeps his eyes trained down, curious as to what Lance is doing but not enough to change his position. A moment later the hand returns, anyway. “It’s gonna be okay. I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m here for you. We all are. Things change every day, this will too.”

Keith summons the will to get his voice working again. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

“I know.” Lance nudges Keith, holding his hand out, and Keith blinks a lot before looking.

There, resting on his outstretched palm, is another tiny, yellow heart— _trust me_.

Keith can’t help it—he chokes out a laugh, and then his shoulders start shaking and before he knows it, he’s curling into Lance for comfort, staining his pajama shirt with salty tears and quiet, hiccupping cries.

Lance holds him throughout. After, Keith breaks the heart in half and gives part of it to Lance, and they eat it while Lance talks Keith’s ear off about constellations and planets and suns, slowly siphoning away Keith’s problems until all that remains is an exhausted warmth, and then Lance lets Keith crash in his bed.

Maybe that little conversation heart stays nestled in the corners of Keith’s mind for weeks after. Nobody has to know.

* * *

Keith’s been training for around an hour now, swiping and crashing into robots with his bayard, running himself into exhaustion through the adrenaline and strength pumping through his veins. He’s so focused on the singular goal of hitting the next robot that he doesn’t notice, at first, the voice calling to him from the doorway, or the myriad of other whispers and shoving that went along with it before Lance is suddenly stumbling into the room.

Snapping out of his training-induced stupor, Keith scrambles to call the robots off and, panting heavily, calls to Lance, “What are you doing?”

“Can—” Lance swallows thickly, eyes flitting around. He looks _supremely_ nervous. “Can you come over here for a second, Keith?”

Mystified, Keith pauses for a moment— _what the hell kind of trick is Lance playing?_ —before slowly nodding and making his way across the training deck, grabbing a towel and drying around his neck as he does. By the time he’s standing in front of Lance, he can say with certainty that something isn’t right; Lance is _also_ sweating buckets, despite very clearly not having worked out, and he refuses to meet Keith’s eyes, something he always does.

Keith regards him warily. Did something bad happen?

“Are you okay?” Keith asks hesitantly, raising an eyebrow. “You look—bad.”

“Gee, thanks,” Lance sighs, and Keith feels some relief that at least Lance isn’t bad off enough to stop being sarcastic. “I’m—I’m fine, Keith, I just—I have something for you. To tell you.”

Eyebrows still raised, Keith nods and waits expectantly. It would be a mistake to say that he’s not enjoying making Lance sweat just a _little_ bit, even if he has no idea what’s even happening here. A flustered Lance, while not a rare sight, is something that Keith personally doesn’t get to inspire that often (well, not that he’s noticed, anyway), so he’s going to enjoy it while he can.

…That is, unless Lance takes _another_ thirty seconds to actually do something. Honestly, Keith doesn’t have all day.

“Look, Lance,” Keith starts, vaguely irritated, “if you have something to say, can you just spit it out? I wanted to get to level 50 today, so—”

Keith gets cut off abruptly by Lance grabbing his hands and dropping something in them, and before Keith can fully react or question what the hell Lance just gave him, he’s high tailing it out of there, disappearing down the hall where Keith can hear laughter that sounds suspiciously like Hunk and Pidge.

Okay. _WHAT?!_

Utterly nonplussed, Keith looks down at his hands. What could possibly be so daunting that Lance had to run away after—

Oh.

_Oh._

Curled onto Keith’s palms are not one, not two, but _three_ little hearts, colored red, blue, and purple. Keith sees the shapes and immediately feels his body warming more, feels his heartbeat pick up, because he’s never gotten _three_ before; what’s so special about these?

Keith turns them all over and reads them.

_My love._

_Be mine._

_Date me._

Holy _shit._

“Lance— _Lance_!” Keith shouts, voice cracking a little in his excitement, high-pitched and urgent. He curls his hand into a fist, holding the hearts securely, and immediately starts running, skidding out into the hallway and looking wildly around. “Are you joking? This better not be a joke! _LANCE!”_

He hears peels of laughter coming from the kitchen, so he shoots that way in a whirlwind of fluttering heartbeats and rushed steps, throwing open the door and searching, wide-eyed, for the culprit.

Lance is standing behind the counter, a guilty smile on his red-hued face. He raises a faltering hand in greeting. “Hey.”

“ _Yes_.” Keith is out of breath, but he still almost trips over himself in his haste to get to where Lance is. He waves the hearts urgently in Lance’s face, imploring him to understand what he’s getting at, what his _yes_ means. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“Yes?” Lance repeats after a lot of blinking, excitement mounting in his voice.

Keith nods, face breaking out in a grin. “ _Yes!”_

Lance lets out a great whoop and wraps his arms around Keith, lifting him and spinning him around. The conversation hearts scatter across the floor, clacking and spinning against the tile, but that doesn’t matter now.

Now, they don’t need those to communicate anymore.

(Keith’s still found on his hands and knees later that day, looking around for the lost candies. He might be a little more sentimental than he lets on; don’t talk to him about it.)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading :] [buy me a ko-fi!](https://ko-fi.com/renyoi)
> 
> [hmu on my klance tumblr!](https://klancey.tumblr.com/)


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